How often do you find yourself running about your life always worried about what your child, lover, friend, boss, co-worker is doing with their life? How often do you find yourself more concerned for how another’s life is turning out? How often do you sit back, relax and turn the lens inward to examine how YOUR life is flowing?
I was approached the other day by a family member about helping out another soon-to-be family member. He was certain that she needed help and that I could help her. He began to describe the situation at great length. He seemed to know exactly what needed to happen and how she needed help. He knew what was wrong with how she was living life, how she was being treated in her relationships, and how she needed to get out of it with my help or someone similar.
This was the second or third time he had approached me about helping her. I sat and listened to him. I made myself available for whatever I might be called for in that moment. And, as I listened, I realized that this had nothing to do with me being of service to anyone that wasn’t in that conversation right then and there. It wasn’t her that needed help. It was him.
The minute you find yourself so involved in someone else’s business – notice the red flag. There is no point in your life – ever – that you should be so involved in what someone else is choosing to do with their life, unless they’ve asked you specifically to help them. Then that’s a different story. Otherwise, and especially if unsolicited, become away to any moment that you find yourself thinking you know what’s best for someone else. You don’t.
You might be thinking, “What do you mean I don’t know what’s best for them? They are clearly making all the wrong decisions. See how their life is turning out?” You must put these assumptions to inquiry – to pull from Byron Katie: can you know that it’s true that you know what’s best for them? Can you EVER know TRULY what is best for another human being? No. Never. Even when it’s your own child.
Living by this truth requires us to pull our hands out of other people’s cookie jars. There is never a moment that we can honestly say we know what’s best for another person. As long as we are wrapped up in how another person should live there life, our lives are left unattended. We lose power over our own lives when we think that we can somehow know what’s best for someone else in their life.
We must STOP. Turn the lens inward. And reclaim what is truly our own.
This can be a terrifying process for some. Most of the time it’s because we aren’t quite ready to take responsibility for our own lives. It seems so much easier to analyze and critique what another person is going through, so they can make the challenging changes and not us.
It’s a major redflag anytime you find yourself deeply enmeshed in someone else’s business, even if it looks as though other person’s life is about to be “ruined.” The best thing that you can do for that person is to give them their power back – and take back yours. Empower the individual to know what to do for themselves. Love them enough to accept them just as they are, right where they are, without trying to change them.
Drawing your attention back in to yourself creates space in the relationship and allows the other individual to step up to the plate in their own life. And it puts you in a position to step up to the plate in your own life.
It takes far more courage to allow the other person to be – and knowing and trusting that they are right where they are supposed to be – than sitting around thinking you know what’s best for them. It takes guts to truly step out of someone else’s life and back into your own. In the process of doing so, you reclaim your own power and empower the other individual to do the same.
Ultimately, I told him that he nor I could make her change. He has as much power as I do to create change in another person’s life – none. Even if we were in the same room as each other, I would never approach her and begin to offer advice and wisdom on how to go about changing her life and telling her what to do. That would never work.
The same way he and her mother had already tried to make suggestions – suggestions that didn’t work. There’s a reason children don’t listen to their parents. Parent’s seem to think they always know what’s best. And, yes, while they may have wisdom on life, thinking you know what’s best for another person, especially when it’s your child, steals their power.
It puts them in a position of codependency – on you. It enables a negative behavior of always looking outside themselves for the answer rather than relying on their own innate power and wisdom.
Yes, people need guidance and support in life – that’s what mentors, life coaches, counselors, spiritual leaders, family and friends are for. But, the desire to seek support from these individuals must come from within the person. This is where their power is. This is where the power for true change lives.
You will always be ineffective if you think you can force someone to change or if you think you know what is best for another person. Anytime – every time – you think that thought just drop it. It’s not useful for you or the other person. Learn to live without that thought. Your life and their life will be much better without it.
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